Yes, even though we were full pay (but instate) at UVa, I like their approach of focusing on need based aid rather than merit. If they lose out on some top students because of lack of merit aid, whether instate or out of state kids, that is okay. They get more than enough applications from top students every year.
In many other threads, the definition of “middle class” get stretched to include some very high income levels (e.g. people with $200,000+ annual incomes).
BMW could be middle class around here, the rich have Bentleys, Maserati, fancy Jaguar, I’m not sure what type. But BMWs are for the wannabes. 
@Charliesch, source for your contention that rooming charges ubsidize anything outside of housing? My understanding is that room charges go to pay for only upkeep and other costs of those buildings.
@DrGoogle, as someone who drives a 7 year old Nissan sedan, I clearly belong in the “peasant” category. Worse yet, I have no desire to ever spend more than $20,000 on a car. So I’m a deadbeat peasant at that.
CCNY/CUNY system. Before 1969 when tuition was free*, but admissions was highly selective…they were regarded as elite public universities almost on par with the most elite universities in the country. There’s a reason why CCNY was regarded as the “Berkeley of the East” or the “poor man’s Harvard” before 1969.
However, once the city and CCNY/CUNY implemented an extremely ill-conceived and implemented policy change to suddenly allow open admissions in 1969 and later, made substantial cuts to state/city subsidies which abolished free-tuition in 1975, the vast majority of the best Profs and students voted with their feet and left for more academically respectable/elite public and private Us ranging from Berkeley to the Ivies/elite peers.
It is only in the last 15 or so years that CCNY/CUNY’s academic reputation has started to recover from its rapid and steep decline in the '70s. The decline was so bad that by the '80s and even when I was in HS in the early-mid '90s, CCNY/CUNY were widely regarded as “colleges of last resort/13th grade” by most average and moreso, above-average and better students.
While CCNY/CUNY is no longer regarded as poorly nowadays, their academic rep hasn’t recovered to the level of the reputation it had before they did away with tuition or highly competitive admissions on basis of academic achievement at the tail end of the '60s and elimination of free tuition in 1975.
- Exception for some evening/part-timers.
All these state universities are doing surprising well despite the drop in state money. They are adapting their models to reflect new circumstances. It isn’t like the good old days of the 1950s and 1960s. But what other institution is?
Take CU Boulder. They charge $47k sticker price for OOS-ers and have 50% OOS enrollment. They can do that since they are in a beautiful place and have an 80+% acceptance rate. That’s a product they can sell to certain people – largely CA and TX kids from upper middle class and higher kids who are not academically strong enough to attend their home state flagships. Plus some NE kids who like to ski. They also binge on scientific research money. They get almost no money from Colorado. The model is what it is, but it works just fine. Voters in Colorado don’t vote to provide CU with any more, so CU adapts.
Less than an hour away is Colorado State. They don’t get much state money either and they don’t have the brand and location that allows them to bring in kids from outside the region. They live off of enrolling in-state kids at an in-state sticker price that is a discount to CU’s. CSU gets many really smart kids from our local high end public charter school because it has a good honors college and is a friendlier price point than CU. Their model works too.
Cal, UVA and UM have their model. Which is different than UNC-CH’s model. Which is different than Mich State’s model. Which is different than the model at Oklahoma and Alabama and Nebraska and ASU.
But by any measure, all those schools are thriving. It just isn’t like the olden days of yore. Whatev.
The CUNY system, as already mentioned, plus a number of the SUNYs. The CSUs. The Florida colleges just below UF, and maybe even UF, for that matter. Louisiana. Arguably Hawai’i and Georgia (though not Georgia Tech—heavy research funding helps, clearly). The Illinois colleges just below UIUC. Arizona, probably. Alaska and Maine, though those flagships weren’t terribly strong to start with. And we’ll have to see what shakes out of Wisconsin the next few years.
Those are just off the top of my head—I didn’t look at a map and go state-by-state to get that list. Of course, you mentioned flagships, which is a biased sample—in a lot of cases the legislature protected the flagship while slamming the rest of the system.
@kaliamom, I love being a peasant too but I’m not impressed by these BMWs.
CCNY didn’t decline because of a lack of money. It declined because politicians changed its model.
It was both.
The change to open admission was one factor. The economic crisis in NY state/City in the '70s substantially cut funding just around the time they needed it most to deal with the flood of remedial students and flight of topflight Profs* who felt rightfully that they signed up to teach academically competitive and motivated students. Not act as remediation teachers for students who failed to master K-12 academics. That and elimination of free tuition also meant most of the topflight students who would have stayed also voted with their feet to transfer/apply elsewhere as they wanted to attend college with their academic peers…not be stuck in classes where the pacing was dictated by the needs of increasing numbers of remedial students.
- Said Profs might have been induced to stay with substantially higher salaries and grants for their academic research to compensate for teaching more remediation courses.
Yeah, but all the cool kids have Tesla’s. 
As is often the case in conversations like these, the good old days weren’t nearly as good as you remember.
In 1965, state universities enrolled 3.97 million students. 14.75 million in 2013. 16.72 million projected for 2024. So what exactly is the evidence of decline?
Aggregate state dollars going to State U’s haven’t declined much or at all. State dollars are still big, but they are a much lower percentage of budget mostly because State U’s have grown very dramatically in size. Their funding model is much more diversified than back in the older smaller days. If the State U’s didn’t diversify their revenue model, they never would have been able to serve so many more students as they do today.
The reason why things might seem like they were so much “better” in the 1960s is that a much much more smaller portion of our society attended college. The 1960s were great, for sure, if you were one of the very few who actually attended college in those days.
The CSUs have declined? I don’t know the ins and outs of their offerings, but from the standpoint of a CA resident with 3 kids, that is news to me! The positive impression of the CSUs has gained enormously over the years. CSSLO is a top college now I hear, and lots of kids cannot get into SDSU anymore, even though back in the day only a fishing license was required for admission (totally joking).
73: Okay, I'll give you CSSLO—but judging from what I've heard from faculty members at the other CSUs, I'm not budging on them.
Also, #72: Since when do enrollment numbers provide a knock-down argument on this? That just means they’ve expanded, not that they’ve either improved or declined? That said, I’m with you on the fact that the college-attending population has changed, making comparisons difficult if not impossible.
DFB – there’s no doubt that it was much better in the 1960s being a State U professor than it is today. Tenure, great benefits, awesome pensions, etc. The 1960s were also better times to be a UAW member working for GM. That doesn’t mean that a 1960s Chevy is a better car than a 2015 model. Things change.
The mission and funding model for State U’s is radically different than it was back in the old days. Are they better or worse than before? Both is the correct answer. It depends on what your definition is.
I’d argue that Michigan today, by any measure of quality, is a far far superior university today than it was back in the day. It hasn’t declined one bit despite declining state support and challenging demographics in its region. Most of its alumni could not get admitted today. It is bigger and better than ever. Also more expensive than ever. Same goes for UVA (where I attended).
The SUNY system has been ravaged by the way Albany funds the SUNY system. The result is that an absurd amount of money is just wasted. Absurd wasteful practices like" spending down" at the end of fiscal year on absurd wasteful things simply to “spend out”, and reallocation of funds and freezes after spending millions on some project so that the goal can’t be reached and the money already spent was therefore wasted, and on and on and on. Millions may be spent on a renovation plan only to be dumped because funds suddenly become unavailable or are reallocated for some other purpose which results in a frenzy of spending for that other purpose. Any time a budget has any surplus, the money is spent on absurd things so it is reallocated the following year at even higher levels the next year (with the use it or lose it excuse). Thousands can be spent on recruiting only to find that lines are “frozen”. If there is a less efficient way to run a university system, well SUNY will try that out next year. The funding structure supports tremendous waste. The local campuses get to keep certain monies which further serves to support horrible values because how much money is kept on campus for that activity (as opposed to another that does not line the pockets of a local campus but goes to Albany) drives what is done-even if it ends up costing tax payers more. Because the interest is keeping money at the local campus not saving tax dollars. Lousy system.
You wonder why SUNY is not Michigan? If you think there is any SUNY that comes any where close to any of the flagships of (the top say 30 or 40) other states you are mistaken. Redundancies, loss of focus/confusion about mission (community colleges now trying to be 4 year universities in towns that have pre-existing SUNY 4 year schools next to towns with other 4 year schools) and poor contingencies drive the system. How many English departments are needed in one state? Do we really need 64 campuses. Why are we building elaborate dorms for CC that have a 4 year coillege or university around the corner? Wasn’t the CC intended as a COMMUNITY college??? Hoover’s expression was about “…a car in every garage” not “a SUNY in every backyard”.
PurpleTitan, about rooming fees. SUNY built elaborate expensive dorms. Instead of putting money into academics, better classrooms with up to date resources, Binghamton built a wasteful arena and swanky dorms. Why?
Because 18 year old people make the decisions about where they will attend college. And what appeals to an 18 year old average student? Posh dorms and other accouterments that make schools look like vacation resorts instead of places to work (not true for stronger students but most SUNYs are geared to average).
And the SUNYs compete for students. They are so busy trading claims of being the “star of the System” or the “premiere university of the north east” (gag) and spending oodles of PR money (to compete with other SUNY schools!!!) that they fail to fund the very things that could improve the system. Why in the would are tax payers funding PR at SUNY?? So NY residents pay for SUNY Albany PR that claims it is better than Binghamton. And that means that NY residents must pay costs associated with Binghamton’s PR to claim it is better than Albany and Stony Brook. And NY tax payers fund posh dorms to be built so that students choose Binghamton over ____?
And about posh dorms for community colleges. WT- is that about? Community colleges were supposed to be places for working adults seeking more training or returning to college or balancing college and work, and for students not yet ready for a 4 year residential program who could bolster their skills while living at home. But the vast SUNY CC system is so confused about its own mission that it is now building elaborate expensive dorms and each CC’s PR department is clamoring for students and competing with other SUNYs for students. And there is more money going to things that should be the lowest priority but that are robbing the funds available for academics. SUNY is a ----mess and it shows no signs of getting better.
I wouldn’t recommend the system if there is another option. If no other option is available, and for students just wanting the credential, it is a bare bones efficient way to a degree. This is not an indictment of the students. It is a harsh criticism of a system that deserves such criticism.
Michigan and Virginia shouldn’t be used as evidence for public universities being in great shape—that’s like saying all private liberal arts colleges are doing wonderfully because Amherst and Williams are in good shape.
And when I talked about what I’ve heard from faculty, I’m not talking about working conditions, I’m talking about the health of entire universities. Faculty are aware of more than just our little work bubbles, we really are.
(Not to mention that there are nearly zero faculty around now who remember what it was like being a faculty member in the 1960s. Heck, there are only a small number of us—and I’m not one of them—who remember what it was like being a faculty member in the 1990s!)
I disagree that anyone would look at those schools now and say ‘Oh, but they are crappy compared to what they used to be’ UF and FSU are very hard to get into now whereas in the past any instate student with decent grades could get ins, and it is still quite a bargain as far as tuition goes. I don’t know that the New York schools were ever seen as really good schools, just okay as far as state schools go and now students are lining up to go to them so I’d say they are better than they were in past generations.
The states are making it work for their residents. UVM has 65% OOS and charge a fortune, yet I don’t think the reputation has been hurt at all, or that an employer would think less of it now than 20-30 years ago.